Opinion Brief — January 7, 2014

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The New Democrats have, at the provincial level, demonstrated an ability to run stable, fiscally-responsible governments … just not in Ontario. And it’s in Ontario, writes Paul Adams, where Tom Mulcair has to make substantial seat gains in the next election — and where he might find himself undermined by provincial NDP leader Andrea Horwath’s populist impulses. “Andrea Horwath’s appeal is based largely on a nebulous populism which undermines Mulcair’s attempt to portray the federal NDP as a party of grown-ups prepared to govern.”

A recent pitch from the medical community to triple taxes on tobacco to cut smoking-related deaths is a great idea, writes the Tyee’s Bill Tieleman — but making tobacco a controlled substance, available only through a prescription, is a better one. “Sound far-fetched? It isn’t, really.”

Bloomberg’s Cass R. Sunstein argues rigid ideologies on both sides of the left-right divide are making it much harder for Western governments to embrace sensible approaches to climate change. “In the coming year, the U.S. will make a series of important decisions with respect to greenhouse gases. For such problems, noisy, headline-grabbing dogmas are a serious impediment to progress.”

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wonders why Democrats are missing a golden opportunity for some populist tub-thumping over Republicans’ self-destructive war on the unemployed. “You don’t have to be a Huey Long to recognize that there’s an opening for populist outrage here: The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and Republicans seem content to widen the divide.”

Finally, Rosa Brooks of Foreign Policy tears a strip off the CIA for blocking the release of a Senate committee report which established that the agency’s program of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ did amount to torture. “The purpose of the classification system is to prevent the release of information that could harm the United States if made public, not to cover up waste, fraud, illegality, or abuse — and certainly not to save officials from embarrassment.”